Prince Of Hard Court

Hawke Proves To Be A Knick Off The Old Bard While Trying To Publicize New Movie

May 26, 2000|By Gary Dretzka, Tribune Staff Writer.

HOLLYWOOD — Ethan Hawke is in from New York to promote "Hamlet," and a cadre of publicists has carefully arranged the busy young actor's schedule.

Playing Hamlet is a dream assignment for any serious thespian, so his handlers assume Hawke will stay on-topic when they sneak away for a cup of coffee. When they return, however, they find--to their horror--the conversation has somehow turned from the Bard to basketball, and the movie under discussion is the new IMAX salute to Michael Jordan.

Yes, even in Hollywood, boys will be boys.

It's not that Hawke doesn't want to promote "Hamlet"--in fact, he's clearly impressed by how director Michael Almereyda was able to give it a contemporary American spin--but Hawke's a bit preoccupied by the Knicks' chances in the NBA playoffs.

Still, the 29-year-old actor-director-novelist neatly finds a way to get back to the film, in which Shakespeare's Danish realm morphs into a giant corporation, Denmark Corp., based in Manhattan. Sotto voce, Hawke asks his guest how he came off on the previous night's "Tonight Show."

As well as could have been expected. Between the steady parade of comic sketches and zoo animals, host Jay Leno only was able to squeeze in about four minutes of actual conversation.

"I'm proud that we were able to show a clip from the movie and inject a little of the classic text onto the show, though," he says, not nearly as dark and brooding as the prince-turned-independent-filmmaker Almereyda asked him to play. His Hamlet is the scion of a prominent New York family, haunted by the ghost of his murdered media-mogul father.

"For Hamlet, in the original story, Denmark was like a prison," he says. "Denmark Corp. is like a prison, as well.

With all the recent mergers of multimedia companies, no one in America can escape the images constantly fed to us by one or two big companies."

Anyone who saw Peter Seller's staging of "The Merchant of Venice" at the Goodman Theater a few years back will recognize the high-tech devices employed by Almereyda to jazz up "Hamlet." Characters often address each other and the audience through strategically placed video monitors, while discordant ambient noise occasionally does battle with dialogue.

"This is a distinctly American `Hamlet,'" says Hawke. "The characters sound American, and Michael didn't feel the need to bring in British actors to add authority to the project."

While the text is authentic, the play has been shortened to fit the attention span of today's movie-going teens and young adults. There's a constant barrage of media images, and, as if to drive Almereyda's point even closer to home, brand-name products fill the screen.

Hawke has been making movies fully half of his young life, starting with Joe Dante's "Explorers," which also introduced the late River Phoenix. After playing Todd in "Dead Poets Society," he collaborated with Gary Sinise in the moving World War II drama "A Midnight Clear," then really caught fire as a moody Gen X hottie in "Reality Bites."

A friendship with Sinise later would bring Hawke to Chicago, where he was featured in a Steppenwolf revival of "Buried Child."

Hawke managed to raise a few eyebrows at the time, as well, when his largely autobiographical novel, "The Hottest State," was published by Vintage Books. He doesn't doubt that his newfound celebrity helped launch the book, and, therefore, critics wanted to chop him down a peg or two.

"I don't think the critics were being unfair when they pointed to my being an actor in their reviews," he said. "After all, I might not have been able to get the book published otherwise, let alone reviewed, but most of them took it seriously. My next book will be less autobiographical."

At the same time that he's been trying to finish a small, digital-video movie he directed--for which he called in IOUs from several high-profile acting friends--Hawke has begun a second novel. He's had to rent an office a couple of blocks away from the New York apartment he shares with Thurman (they also have a country home upstate) because their nearly 2-year-old daughter, Maya, offers too many excuses for him to flake off and not type.

Then, too, there are his beloved Knicks.

Like Woody Allen and Spike Lee, Hawke has season tickets at Madison Square Garden--only his are in the "vastly cheaper" seats, where "fans are more into the game and no one pays much attention to me."

One thing does gnaw at him, however. Like any rabid Knicks fan, he respected and was duly awed by the athleticism of Michael Jordan, but he hated No. 23's ability to turn out the lights on Ewing & Co.

"It was tough knowing that, even if we were ahead by five or six points in the fourth quarter, we were going to lose ... that Michael was going to hit the last basket, like he did when he came back from playing baseball," says Hawke. "Still, the Knicks always played their best against him, and those games were fun to watch."